Yale Fellow Ill Met? Ivy League University Accused Of Racial Bias Against Asian-Americans; Team Trump Launches Probe

The Trump administration is launching an investigation following accusations that Yale University's admissions practices discriminates against Asian-American applicants, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
The investigation by the Justice Department and the Education Department into whether Yale University is a part of a determined effort by the Trump administration to challenge the longstanding consideration of race in the admissions decisions of elite colleges and move towards a race-neutral admission process.

According to The Wall Street Journal report, the probe against Yale follows a complaint filed in 2016 by a group of Asian-American organisations, led by the New Jersey Asian American Coalition for Education.

The group also charged Brown University and Dartmouth College of discriminatory practices against Asian Americans in the admission process based on their race but the Justice Department and Education Department did not find enough merit to proceed against these two institutions.

The coalition’s complaint pointed out that the percentage of Asian Americans at Yale and other Ivy League schools has declined even as their share in the U.S. population continues to grow. The decline, the coalition claims, has been fuelled by negative stereotypes and tougher admissions standards applied for Asian Americans.

The Justice Department is also currently investigating allegations of anti-Asian discrimination in Harvard’s admissions process, based on a 2015 complaint by Asian-American organisations.

The complaint alleged that Harvard University’s admissions process tantamounted to an illegal quota system, as roughly the same percentage of African-Americans, Hispanics, whites and Asian-Americans get admitted year after year, despite fluctuations in application rates and qualifications.